I don’t understand your opening sentence. Why would they keep it unplugged?
Personally, I don't think that holds water. Everyone involved in this drama wants ice cream in the stores. It's not like McDonalds corporate has some Jobsian disgust towards putting ice cream and a burger in the same meal or anything. The far easier explanation is that McDonalds paid Taylor for a custom machine that's extremely temperamental, not that they secretly want to ban their own product because it's ice cream.
It's a cost problem.
Even one service call per month is a significant cost to a low-margin business like a quick-serve restaurant.
It is quite possible there is some hinky corporate politics and such within McDonalds corporate that is preventing improvement here.
Franchisees in general don't wear the pants in this relationship. If McD corporate says you use this machine, tough shit, you use that machine. I'm sure the feelings of franchisees are broadly speaking "taken into consideration" but it's not like there's a union here, the dynamic here is that franchisees will shut their mouths and go make some money for daddy.
It's a weird arms-length model that has run into some trouble before, particularly surrounding labor law, as McD corporate has some very detailed expectations on how franchisees will hire, fire, pay, and operate their employees.
Anyway basically if McDonald's says "you will take those things out of our machine" yeah, franchisees are absolutely going to hop to it. tbh if McDonald's were smart they'd just have done it without the "ackshually this thing will steal your girlfriend, poison your customers, and kill your dog" defamation, because if they'd simply said "we're terminating our business relationship with Kytch, have it removed in the next 2 weeks" franchisees absolutely would have done it anyway. Now they are fighting a lawsuit about it because they just had to get a dig in.
But anyway, corporate wears the pants is the dynamic. It's a very very tightly managed and top-down "franchise".
But if 13% of restaurants have the ice cream machine non-functional at any given time, that means half or more of them are having the problem at some time in the last month.
If you're going to ignore a problem at that scale... well, that's just terrible.
Even if McDonalds had been more reserved, however; Kytch still has some industrial-espionage claims that might go somewhere.
Also, for those wondering exactly how controlled McDonalds' franchise relations are: McDonalds franchisees are required to rent their locations from McDonalds, because McDonalds front-runs their business partners and buys the most valuable land[0] from under them. Literally nothing about the business of being a McDonalds franchisee works the way capitalism or business ownership is "supposed" to work[1]. It's more like paying to work at a somewhat-lucrative job than actually owning a business. McDonalds is a richest-of-the-rich company that sells business opportunities to the poorest-of-the-rich crowd[2], who are looking for a way to park lots of wealth[3] in a safe asset.
[0] Typically, land immediately next to US Interstate off-ramps or equivalently high-traffic highways
[1] Unless you're a left-winger, in which case the McDonalds "strip our business partners of capital interest in the store" policy is how capitalism is "supposed" to work, and treating your business partners as equals is a historical aberration.
For the record I do find the left-wing critique of capitalism to be at least somewhat grounded in current business reality.
[2] Menial labors of the capitalist class. If you define "poor, middle-class, and rich" based on how people make their money (poor: unskilled labor, middle-class: skilled labor, rich: capitalism), then you can recursively subdivide that grouping further, with richest-of-the-rich being people whose wealth comes from owning other businesses through some means (usually trademark or copyright).
[3] McDonalds wants their franchisees to hold at least $750,000 of liquid capital and be able to invest between $1,000,000 and $2,200,000 into their stores.
It is all in the name of "quality" or more truthfully "consistency".
Even so, unless you're a relatively small regional chain, you'd think that having at least two different equipment suppliers would help corporate drive down costs for the franchisees, and thereby make more profit for themselves.
That's what is so strange about this entire situation. McD corporate historically has been laser-focused on profit, which they get through scale (volume) and efficiency. I don't see how there aren't some people in corporate getting fired for this. If the ice cream machines work, they franchisees sell more product. This generates more revenue (and profit) selling the restaurants more ice cream mixture, as well as increasing profits for the restaurants themselves. Which also generates more profits for corporate too. Because of course corporate double-dips.
Money being left on the table... that doesn't sound like McDonalds.
While not quite as deliberate an action as (great?) grandparent was suggesting, I could see the possibility existing where fixing the machines is too much hassle until a competitor opens and they begin having a noticeable impact on customer retention, increasing the expected ROI on fixing the machine enough for management/owner to take action.
So every McDonald's has an ice cream machine as a more sort of "break glass in case of emergency" situation. Or in this case "in case of DQ". But if there is no DQ in the area, why operate the machine? Just have it be "broken". It's not like people have an option they didn't have before.
Why operate the grill or fryer? To sell food and make money. Instead of selling someone a meal for $7 McDonalds can sell them a meal + a mcflurry for $10. Why wouldn't they want to do this?
It doesn't make any sense that a bunch of franchise owners are all in together on some kind of ice cream conspiracy. Surely the truth is less interesting, it's most likely just a boring cost/benefit analysis. There seems to be some flaw with the machines they use that make them particularly prone to breaking down and difficult to maintain. So some stores that don't sell a lot of ice cream anyway decide it's not worth the cost of keeping them running, while other stores that sell more do keep them running.
And surely it's no coincidence that the markets where people buy more ice cream are also where Dairy Queen stores are more likely to open up.
you're assuming the consumer has a marginal $3 to spend and wouldnt instead spend $7 on a (burger + mcflurry) vs (Burger, fries, soft drink). I would guess that the latter has a much higher margin. So for the same $7 spend you can make more profit if your icecream machine is down.
But, if DQ can do the deal for $7 then foot traffic may move to DQ, meaning McD's loses _both_ profitable options. So, the game is to dissuade the market from the preferred package (burger + icecream) towards the more profitable package (burger , fries, softdrink) .
I'd also add that they probably know that the marginal cost of driving to 2 locations means they're just gonna get what they can at 1 stop. That is few people would buy the burger at mcdonald's and then drive to DQ for the mcBlizzard.
Kinda feels like playing roller coaster tycoon all over again.
And I agree with you, it's likely got a way more pedestrian and human answer. The machines require some amount of maintenance or repair that is simply annoying. And eventually, people prefer to not be annoyed. So maybe one day, you just let the ice cream machine be broken instead of doing the annoying thing. Even if the store sells ice cream like gangbusters. The guy slinging cones for minimum wage isn't seeing a single cent difference if he sells 1 or 1000.